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Altius Golf is the clear leader in the golf ball market despite a long-term decline in the number of golfers and a drop in sales following the financial crisis. The firm has maintained its position by introducing generations of advanced, super-premium golf balls that allow their customers to emulate professional golfers. The company has been losing market share to lower-priced competitors and the CEO wants to introduce a new program called Elevate to foster the next generation of golfers. With Elevate, the firm will introduce a ball that is more forgiving and easier to drive for distance and offer it at a price 40% below the company's flagship brand. Elevate will be available through "off-course" channels such as golf specialty stores and big box retailers instead of "on-course" pro shops where the firm typically sells its products. The board of directors is divided on whether to support the decision. Students must perform a quantitative analysis of the CEO's proposal to understand the potential risks and gains before making a final recommendation.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Product #913578

Judy and John DeRight, looking to diversify their investment portfolios, have retained Angus Cartwright, Jr. to identify prospective real estate acquisitions. Mr. Cartwright has four potential properties that he feels merit an in-depth financial analysis. The case provides an opportunity to examine the various components of real estate return--cash flow, tax benefits, and futures--and measure the profitability of a proposed investment through the calculation of net present value, internal rate of return, and capitalization rate.

AVA is a three-year old e-commerce company in the Philippines. From its early start mimicking the Gilt Groupe concept of online flash sales, the company has grown into a broader e-commerce platform for local fashion commerce. Oliver Segovia needs to evaluate where AVA should go next and answer some complicated personal questions. The case considers issues related to e-commerce platforms, diaspora-based international exchanges, business location choice, and global entrepreneurship broadly.

Essar Group (Essar), a large diversified conglomerate based in India, needs to raise significant capital through an initial public offering (IPO) and has to decide whether to do so through the Indian Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange. The company will have to continue to report in Indian GAAP and, if it decides to list its IPO in the United States or Europe, it also will have to adopt either U.S. GAAP or IFRS. The chief financial officer of Essar has to recommend to management where to raise the needed capital and what accounting standard to adopt. The B case 9B13B015 discloses the decision and describes some of the implementation issues.

Supplement for W13226

Ken Traub is hired as CFO for American Bank Note Holographics, the market-leading security holograph company in January 1999, but discovers on his first day that the company has misstated its financials and resigns. After consulting with the company for the next several weeks as it announces its misstatements to the public, he is asked to become president of the company. Should he take the job or is the company a sinking ship?

This note suggests an approach for developing an effective "career narrative" - a tool for packaging and sharing a professional's past achievements, long-term goals, and forward-looking needs through a compelling story. It focuses mostly on the ways junior professionals can leverage their career story, but also consider what role more senior mentors can - and should - play in cultivating and sharing juniors' career narratives.

In 2011, a group of passionate social entrepreneurs in Rio de Janeiro, with the support and encouragement of several prominent philanthropists and members of government, launch Ensina!, seizing Brazil's unprecedented economic growth and national commitment to education. The new independent educational non-profit is to be part of Teach For All, a global network of organizations inspired by Teach For America. While Ensina! is quickly able to raise the initial capital, recruit graduates from top colleges, garner positive press, and demonstrate early success in increasing student performance, the organization runs into a number of operational challenges in implementing its programs in schools. After pursuing various avenues to address obstacles for Ensina!'s execution found in navigating national education policy and funding, forging partnerships with municipal and state governments, confronting widespread cultural perspectives on teaching as a profession, and managing relationships with local school administrators and staff, Ensina!'s staff and board, despite some success and demonstrated impact, decide to suspend the program in January. Following this decision, Fabio Campos, the most recent CEO of Ensina!, contemplates the possibility of relauching a restructured Ensina! to help bring about enduring, transformative reform to Brazil's public education system, which he believes to be crucial to the future success of Brazil as a nation. The case presents students the opportunity to explore conditions necessary for successful collaborations between non-profit organizations and the government, grapple with the challenges of long-term large-scale performance improvement in public education, and examine Ensina!'s goals in public education reform and different operational strategies for organizations like Ensina! to consider implementing in the future.

This case asks the student to take a stance on whether an portfolio manager should take a long or short position in the equity of Universal Display Corporation (PANL). The stock is polarizing, in that reasonable arguments could be made for both long and short positions. The case suggests a number of steps that an analyst might follow when valuing a company

Spreadsheet Supplement for KEL716

Spreadsheet supplement for KEL740.

Spreadsheet supplement for KEL740.

Spreadsheet supplement for KEL740.

Ibrahim Dabdoub, the Group chief executive of the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), reflects on his past 30 years at the helm of the Bank. Under his leadership, NBK grew from a small local bank to one of the preeminent financial institutions in the region. However, following the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Arab Spring, NBK had to slow its regional expansion. Dabdoub wonders if the Bank is positioned to thrive and fulfill its collective ambition to become the Arab regional bank by 2020.

Victor Alexander was intrigued by the packet of papers that lay in front of him. The papers comprised a brochure that Garden State Bank had put together in an effort to sell the Bonnie Road Distribution Center in Somerset, New Jersey, for $9.7 million. It was April 2013 and the New Jersey real estate market was recovering and the capital markets were in disarray. Alexander had convinced 10 friends to put up $200,000 each in addition to his own $200,000 to acquire one or two troubled properties. Alexander decided to focus on warehouse properties due to their relatively small size, their strong historical performance, and his relevant experience. He wondered whether Bonnie Road would make a good investment.

In 2013, Anders Byriel, CEO of the family-owned Danish textiles company, Kvadrat, considered the firm's strategic plan. In 2000, Byriel and Mette Bendix, Kvadrat's Product Director, had taken over management of the company from their fathers, who had founded Kvadrat in the 1960s. Byriel and Bendix had joined Kvadrat in 1992, and since that time, Kvadrat had grown from €19 million in annual sales to over €86 million. It had expanded its focus on selling textiles to European architects and furniture manufactures, becoming a global company with a wide product range and a broad customer base. Kvadrat's internal organization had grown and transformed to support this larger business. Now Kvadrat's management team was focused on a number of key initiatives: expansion into Asia; improved sales trends in its curtain and Soft Cells businesses; development of Kvadrat's retail sales operations; the implementation of new Human Resources practices; and the execution of a new organizational design. Was such an extensive growth, turnaround and internal development agenda feasible? And, were the initiatives being considered the right ones for Kvadrat?

This case considers the strategies of Charles W. Engelhard, an American mining magnate who made large investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Engelhard was widely believed to have been the model for the James Bond villan Auric Goldfinger. During the 1950s and 1960s Engelhard, who was well-connected with the leadership of the Democratic Party in the United States including President Lyndon B. Johnson, was one of the largest American investors in that country. His close relationship with Harry Oppenheimer, the head of the Anglo-American Corporation, gave him substantial influence within the South African business system. The case starts with anti-apartheid demonstrators protesting outside a ceremony awarding him a prize in Newark, New Jersey. It provides an opportunity to debate the political and ethical responsibilities of businesses in repressive regimes, and the challenges faced by entrepreneurs operating in countries with different value systems and political regimes.

In 2000, Inditex was one of the largest specialty apparel retailers in the world, with $2.4 billion in sales from 1,080 stores across 33 countries. Zara, Inditex's main brand, produced popular designer items at a fraction of design-house prices and could push an item from design to display in less than two weeks. This left most other fashion retailers, who took between 9-12 months for this process, far behind. However, Inditex was still only one-sixth the size of the world's largest specialty retailer, US-based Gap, and two-thirds the size of its Swedish rival, H&M. Amancio Ortega, Inditex's notoriously private Chairman and founder, was committed to challenging these industry leaders. This expansion required more capital and, in July 2000, the company announced it would IPO in 2001. There was also the question of a new management team to take the company forward. Ortega was approaching retirement as was the CEO, José Maria Castellano. The first attempt to find a younger CEO had failed. Hopefully, an IPO would attract a new management team that could maintain Inditex's rapid expansion.